OPINION

KEYHOLE VIEWS

and Local Museum Publics

By Sandro Debono

There is no question that the local museum ecology, including public, nongovernmental and private museums, has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many are the factors at play. Much relates to the sudden shrink in tourism arrivals which confirms, yet again, that local museum publics are still prevalently tourists. This continues to be the case in spite of the significant efforts to bring local publics to the museum happening over the past decade.

The local museum public is nothing short of a paradox and Eurostat Culture Statistics for 2019 provide the necessary research to explain it. Indeed, the Maltese rank high in terms of acknowledging the significance of the country’s cultural heritage. Well over 80% consider this to be the case (Self-Reported Importance of Cultural Heritage - September to October 2017, 40).

On the other hand, Malta has one of the lowest percentage of local publics visiting cultural sites in Europe. Less than 30% are known to visit a cultural site between one to three times. From that percentage, around 10% are registered as having visited over four times (Frequency of cultural participation in the previous 12 months, by cultural activity, 2015, 129).

There is even more to this data that awaits further in-depth study. Visiting times and relevance remain unquantified. Quality of experience, which is a generic term by the latest research, or participatory content too. The high frequency of repeat visits is certainly on the low side.

This state of fact can be arguably read in some of the generic statements that one hears from time to time. ‘Foreigners foster a greater awareness towards our cultural heritage than we do’, some would state. Others claim, more specifically, that ‘we visit museums abroad, knowing too well that we have a history that is equally significant’.

To a certain extent, it may be fair to consider the clamour for free access by local publics registered, yet again, in more recent

“Malta has one of the lowest percentage of local publics visiting cultural sites in Europe”

times as a reaction to the claim that ‘…this is ours and we have a right to access as much as the tourist does’. Would this be tantamount to an increasing awareness and relevance? Certainly not, and it would be a mistake to consider visitor attendance or participation as a yardstick with which to measure institutional relevance and impact.

The local museum institution has a very distinct profile. It is still overwhelmingly object and material-culture centred, looks almost exclusively towards the past to preserve it in a bid to script and occasionally revisit still-standing colonial narratives. Indeed, the raison d’être of the Maltese museum idea, be it public, private or both, is historically and overwhelmingly rooted in preservation.

There is a history to this that can be traced back to colonial times when the institution, then prevalently public, functioned as a safety net to recover and protect Maltese cultural heritage from potential and oftentimes permanent loss. By default, history has defined the ethos of the Maltese museum idea and its collections development ambitions with an almost exclusive focus on Malta-related material. Indeed the historic narrative has informed the ethos of the local museum landscape.

By contrast, the museum of the future shall be less about what it holds, then what it stands for. Museums around the world are fast becoming public-centred, shifting away from their almost exclusive focus on an object-centred narrative. Indeed the museum that looks towards the future is a public space where to address the needs of contemporary societies, rather than a space to experience. This new understanding of the museum institution brings relevance much more into the picture as they become the voice of the communities they represent.

The ambition, which is already late by at least a decade, is the participatory approach to what I call the museum organism, understood as a living space where contents and inhabitants – rather than publics and collections – come together to script meanings and histories. This is, to all intents and purposes, the evolution of the participatory approach advocated by Nina Simon in her seminal publication The Participatory Museum (2010), amongst others who followed. Rather than dictating relevance from institutional and academic high-ground, the desired ambition of the Maltese 21st century museum would be informed by cocreative practices in exhibition, programming and outreach.

Relevance also concerns the potential understanding and comprehension of cultural heritage assets, including collections. The reasons why Malta still has such a low percentage of museum publics when compared to its European peers may well concern the need for a rethink in interpretative methodologies that reflect the knowledge level and understanding of Maltese publics.

Simplification is the name of the game, which is distinctively different from banalisation. This may oftentimes be a bone of contention given that the museum idea for the Maltese public is the historic museum stereotype institution which is but one of very many other forms that the museum idea has been given tangible form throughout its history.

Last but not least, participatory also refers to governance. The Participatory Governance in Cultural Heritage Report published in 2019 outlines reasons, ambitions and best practices in the field. The reasons for participatory governance could be a matter of principle, understood as the public’s right to participate as part of democratic governance. It could also be more related to practical and pragmatic questions such as responsibility, resource and knowledge sharing.

These possibilities might be just about scraping the surface, particularly when seen in the context of what is happening in the museums and heritage landscape all over the world. Nevertheless, they can certainly go a long way to foster the sustained growth of a local museum public. n

Sandro Debono is a museum thinker, culture strategist and University of Malta lecturer. He holds a doctorate from University College London in heritage policy and collections development.